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Mental Mudslide

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29 August


Keel M.

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I had plans to write something meaningful for today and I started it, but never finished. I don't know why. Today, of course, is the 10 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall between the Gulf Coast and New Orleans.

I wasn't living here at the time, so I didn't have to live through the stress of evacuating. I know from past experience, though, that it IS stressful. If you've ever been in horrible commuter traffic, amplify that by 100 and you'll understand.

I wasn't here, but I came back immediately after, so I saw what came after. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen. It was a few weeks after returning that I visited an area of the city that I knew well growing up and there were so so many empty lots where big old houses had been. It was a neighbourhood my dad's brother lived with his family. Their house was damaged, but not too extensively, but they did move about a mile away.

My first job upon my return was working for a risk management company settling claims against Murphy Oil when one of their partially filled oil storage tanks was cracked and leaked oil down river from where I live. At first I was in a small office right around the corner from my house, but that one soon closed and I had to go down to the office at Murphy Oil's site. I passed through the section of the city hit hard by one of the infamous (and more numerous than people realize) levee breaks: the 9th Ward. When I first started commuting down there, I drove through that area and saw more wide open areas than in the other neighbourhood. There was even a house still partially sitting in the street.

I wish we had done better evacuating people. Twice I have tried to read people's stories that have appeared online, about what they went through and I stop reading. Feeling guilty for not losing much of anything when they lost everything. I remember sitting in my aunt's living room in Atlanta, watching CNN try to put family members in touch with one another. My family was scattered, too, but somehow we knew where everyone went.

The one thing I don't understand and likely never will is the connection people have to this city. I have lived here most of my life and have a fondness for it, but there were plenty of people who refused to leave. My life is more valuable to me than where I live. My identity is not with this city. That concept is foreign to me

I wound up going to see 'Forgotten on the Bayou' about a guy who rode out the storm on top of his house with his son. They stayed because they believed that they would be safe within the levee protection system. If you are being told by many officials and meteorologists to evacuate, that tells me that they do not trust the protection. A year after the storm hit, he took a mock FEMA trailer up to D.C. to remind the president that there was still a lot of work to be done. It was televised nationally as this guy and his caravan drove north, stopping at various cities and towns along the way. It was interesting to see it all unfold as I do not remember any of that happening. I don't know why. So that was my tribute to those who didn't survive and haven't been able to return to the city.

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